Emergent foresight processes: industrial activities in wireless communications

Technology foresight has received growing attention among those involved in the shaping and implementation of science and technology (S&T) policies. However, although evaluative analyses of foresight exercises have supplied evidence on acclaimed benefits—such as the generation of future-oriented knowledge and strengthening of collaborative networks—they also point to challenges in translating foresight results into actions within research and technology development (RTD) organizations. In this article, we address these challenges by considering the work of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF), which has sought to promote the conception, development, and diffusion of wireless communication technologies. Specifically, by contrasting this work with well-known government-initiated foresight exercises, we typify so-called explicit, emergent, and embedded foresight activities and explore their interrelationships. Our comparative analysis points to conditions under which policy interventions may not be needed for the emergence of foresight activities that exert a major influence on RTD agendas. It also suggests several context-dependent roles for public policy, among which government-driven foresight exercises and the catalysis of more narrowly focused activities are but two examples.     

新能源汽车产业发展的政策支持

新能源汽车是低碳经济的必然选择,代表汽车产业的发展趋势。新能源汽车产业化发展的直接推动力就是国家的相关扶持政策。美国、日本和欧洲的发达国家对新能源汽车技术高度重视,从汽车技术变革和产业升级的战略出发,颁布了优惠的政策措施。中国新能源汽车产业的发展也在政府支持下开局、破局和蓬勃发展。     

绿色与非绿色技术对后续创新影响的比较——“厚此薄彼”还是“双赢策略”

尽管绿色技术一直被认为具有广阔的发展前景,但这些技术在企业间的扩散率却很低。企业在非绿色与绿色技术创新关系上存在“厚此薄彼”的现象。基于1992—2019年中国制造业上市公司专利数据研究发现,相较于非绿色技术,绿色技术的前向引用次数更多,且产生了更大的知识溢出效应,对整个社会后续创新具有更大的正向影响力。此外,由于高能耗行业存在转化成本高、自身知识储备不足等问题,随着能耗水平提升,绿色技术对后续创新的正向影响力逐渐减弱。相较于非国有控股企业,国有控股企业绿色技术对后续创新产生了显著正向影响。该结论对政府设计绿色与非绿色创新“双赢策略”,促进企业从“厚此薄彼”转向绿色与非绿色技术双创新具有重要意义。     

数字经济时代下联盟管理能力对企业颠覆性技术创新的影响——知识流动的中介作用与知识重构能力的调节作用

随着5G网络、人工智能等新科技的推广，数字经济时代已经到来。然而，在数字经济时代下，工业企业要在新一轮科技革命中抢占先机，必须组建联盟关系推动颠覆性技术创新。基于创新联盟理论，构建联盟管理能力与企业颠覆性技术创新研究框架，通过对451份有效问卷数据的实证研究发现：①联盟管理能力对企业颠覆性技术创新有显著正向影响；②知识流动在联盟管理能力与企业颠覆性技术创新的关系中起部分中介作用；③知识重构能力调节联盟管理能力与知识流动和颠覆性技术创新之间的正相关关系。     

Foresight studies : A new approach in anticipatory policy making in the Netherlands

Selection and priority setting in technology policies become more and more urgent. Confronted with budget constraints, policy makers need planning methods for well-argued choices. But how can we assess technology fields of particular interest to our countries? Prospective analysis can help us. The author develops an empirical model for foresight studies as a tool in strategic decision making. It is based on a Dutch experiment in recent years and illustrates how several stakeholders in a nation can be mobilized to assess emerging technologies, develop a common field of reference in judging these technologies, and coordinate the joint actions of the actors in this field. Foresight seems to be a rather interactive planning method in which governments have to plan the process rather than the outcome. In reflection on action, the author makes clear that foresight can reduce complexity when it is a process of concerted action in which public and private actors operate as coproducers.     

在位企业非连续性技术变革的技术代际桥研究

非连续性技术变革给在位企业带来巨大挑战，要求在位企业克服新技术研发困难和自身潜在惰性进行积极响应，在与新进入企业市场竞争中获取持续竞争优势，化解熊彼特提出的破坏性创新威胁。整合社会网络理论、知识管理理论及创新管理理论，以65家汽车综合型整车在位制造企业为样本，通过搭建发明家桥、合作研发桥、混合技术桥等3个维度的技术代际桥，探讨在位企业如何在维持两代技术阶段性平衡的前提下提高新技术创新绩效。结果发现：发明家桥与企业新技术创新绩效呈倒U型关系；合作研发桥和混合技术桥对企业新技术创新绩效具有显著促进作用；旧技术创新绩效负向调节发明家桥与新技术创新绩效的倒U型关系。研究旨在为在位企业应对非连续性技术变革，提高新技术创新绩效提供相应的对策建议。     

Systemic analysis of UK foresight results: Joint application of integrated management model and roadmapping

This paper proposes a new systems approach to foresight studies. The paper will first indicate the complex and conflicting nature of long-term decision-making process. Then, the need for systems approach will be highlighted by the analysis of 1995 UK Delphi survey results and the scenarios of 2000 UK foresight scenarios. The paper proposes two methodologies, namely Integrated Management Model (IMM) and Roadmapping, in order to overcome challenges introduced by the multidimensional characteristics and complex nature of foresight studies. Based on systemic approach, IMM offers a useful way of developing long-term normative policies and strategies and their transformations into actions by considering necessary changes in organizational structures and behaviors. In addition, roadmapping is used to capture, manipulate and manage information to decrease complexity in the foresight by constructing roadmaps. In the paper, IMM and roadmapping are employed first to analyze UK foresight results and then to develop a new methodology to formulate Delphi events and scenarios for the successful implementation of foresight. This paper also promotes the integrated use of foresight techniques such as scenarios and Delphi rather than one for another.     

Technology foresight for a vision of energy sector development in Poland till 2030. Delphi survey as an element of technology foresighting

The security of energy supply at national level is one of the most fundamental missions of every government. This task becomes especially vital in view of the current situation on global energy markets. The planning of technological development in the energy and fuel sectors is a relevant element of energy security strategies. This in turn leads to a more rational and efficient energy use in the future. Technology foresight, which emerged as a proven instrument of technology policy during the 1950s, becomes nowadays one of the essential tools for the creation of the future technological development worldwide. A project entitled: “The Scenarios of Technological Development of Fuel and Energy Sector for National Energy Security” was the first foresight project in the field of energy technologies and at the same time the first technology foresight activity in Poland. This project was being carried out in the period of 2006-2007 by a consortium of research and development institutes on the request of the Polish Ministry of Economy. The aim of the project was to indicate energy and fuel sector development directions in the time horizon up to 2030 and identify key energy technologies of strategic importance. As a result of the foresight activity, technology development scenarios in the energy and fuel sector in Poland as well as corresponding roadmaps for their implementation were formulated. The project results should be helpful in drafting national energy policies and they will indicate priority pathways of research and development (R&D) activities in the next years.The energy foresight project was based mainly on a Delphi method that is nowadays widely applied as a valuable foresight tool. This future-oriented intuitive method was engaged for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of probable developments in the future and for their time scale evaluation as well. In this article, the results of the conducted two-round Delphi survey were presented.     

Heterogeneity vs. externalities in technological competition: A tale of possible technological landscapes

The article presents a stochastic interaction model based on Gibbs random fields to analyze technological competition in a population of heterogeneous adopters with local or global externalities. The relationships between both heterogeneity and externalities and imperfect and asymmetric information are first emphasized. When local externalities and heterogeneity coexist, the technological landscapes of the industry are then shown to depend on the relative influence of these two parameters, with a phase transition: technologies coexist either in approximately equal market shares when heterogeneity is high enough or with one of the technologies only surviving in technological niches when local externalities dominate. Niches do also spontaneously appear: technological options survive in economic space due to the existence of some amount of heterogeneity among agents. On the contrary, when global externalities are added, pure standardization almost always occurs. We finally argue that different public policies should be designed so as to fit with different technological landscapes.     

Modelling creative destruction: Technological diffusion and industrial structure change to 2050

Future disruptive, pervasive technologies will have important consequences for industrial structure, economic growth and the environment. Drawing on theories of technological diffusion, industrial evolution and long-term technological change this paper explores the effect of the development and diffusion of two future pervasive technologies on five industrial sectors in three regions during the 21st century in terms of their effect on economic structural change. Through semi-structured interviews with over 100 experts in the two technologies, the paper quantifies the effects of future biotechnologies and nanotechnologies on the industrial structure of the EU, USA and China in 2020 and 2050. The paper finds that as a result of the development and diffusion of future biotechnologies and nanotechnologies, some industries grow whilst others decline and some new ones emerge. The evidence suggests that the effect is different across countries and time; whereas the experts commonly believe that effect of the technologies on the industrial structure of the EU and US is likely to be similar, the effect in China is considered to be less by 2020 but the same as in the EU and US by 2050. This finding has important implications for the location of production, economic growth and energy demand in the future.     

Optimal taxation and public production in an open dual economy

This paper analyses the determinants of optimal tax policy, trade policy and shadow prices for cost-benefit analysis in a dual economy. It breaks new ground by combining in one model the tax and public investment policies considered in the public economics literature with the notion of labor market imperfection central to contributions on the dual economy.Optimal policies are first derived analytically, providing rules for organizing production, setting taxes and off-setting labor market distortions. Production efficiency is shown to obtain for the taxable part of the economy, a generalized Ramsey rule derived for producing-cumconsuming households in the directly non-taxable sector of the economy and new characterizations of optimal rural-urban migration established in the presence of distortionary taxation. A simple general equilibrium model is then numerically implemented on data for a particular developing country. The optimal policies analytically derived before are computed in the model under alternative assumptions about government revenue requirements, the degree to which different sectors of the economy are directly taxable, the nature of property rights and technological substitution possibilities. The results of these computations provide further insight into the theoretical results as well as clarifying their quantitative significance.     

Environmental technology foresight: New horizons for technology management

Decision-making in corporate technology management and government technology policy is increasingly influenced by the environmental impact of technologies. Technology foresight (TF) and environmental impact assessment (EIA) are analyzed with regard to the roles they can play in developing long-term strategies and policies for reducing the environmental impact of technologies. The methods for TF and EIA are quite well developed, but remain within a tradition of rational decision-making. However, recent studies of tecnology management and innovation have shown that technology development can be explained only to a certain degree by rational decision-making. EIA is usually presented as an objective and scientific method, based on normative underpinnings that usually remain hidden. Thus, systematic information-providing instruments such as TF and EIA can play only a limited role. We propose a procedure for environmental technology foresight. The case is made that environmental technology management will be most helped by a 'constructive' approach in order to stimulate incorporation of long-term environmental objectives.     

Evaluation of national foresight activities: Assessing rationale, process and impact

The paper addresses the question of what constitutes an appropriate evaluation strategy for national foresight activities in different situations. The variety of rationales for foresight is explored, ranging from a desire to set priorities through to participation-oriented goals and building new networks around common visions and strategies. A generational model of foresight is used to show the evolution of key evaluation issues. The generic motivations for evaluation of accountability, justification and learning are discussed in the context of foresight. Evaluation grounded in the concept of behavioural additionality and the systems failure rationale is shown to be more suited as a rationale for foresight as public policy.Assessing the effects of foresight requires an understanding that it is only one of several influences on public policy. To be effective it needs to be tuned into the strategic behaviour and cycles of policy and economic actors. Cases are presented of evaluation of foresight programmes in the United Kingdom, Germany and Hungary. It is concluded that there is no “one-size-fits-all” evaluation approach and that the method selected is conditioned by motivation, timing and the level of aggregation. Foresight cannot be fully evaluated independently from its context. Foresight is being strengthened by the emergence of rigorous and systematic knowledge to assist learning and improvement.     

Book reviews

Conclusion This book argues convincingly that the history of technologies play a major part in current economic evolution. It provides data, figures and explanations related to public policies but does not take into account domestic industrial dynamics and does not explain how national leaders have emerged in high tech industries. Intuitively, one can imagine that the history of firms and industries play a part as well as the history of public policies.European data relate at the best up to 1988 and are scarce relative to the detailed presentation of American public policies (see for examples the data related to basic research between 1975 and 1988 (p. 131).The book aims very clearly to suggest guidelines to the American administration public policies devoted to technologies in order to maintain the leadership of US firms in high tech industries. Unfortunately, the conclusions are not very clear-cut and it is difficult to draw lesson for European countries or for the NICs as the authors themselves think these conclusions are hazardous even in the US case.     

Income Polarization of the U.S. Working Class: An Institutionalist View

We provide an institutional insight into the trend of income polarization within the U.S. working class. In contrast to the previous industrial waves, the current and ongoing industrial revolution is characterized by the replacement of “creative destruction” with jobless growth. Instead of replacing the lost jobs with new ones, new disruptive technologies eliminate more jobs in traditional labor and capital-intensive sectors than create jobs in new idea-intensive sectors. By examining the relationship between the income share of the bottom 50 percent, the middle 40 percent, and the top 10 percent and technological progress, we obtain robust econometric results. According to our results, the income polarization among U.S. workers can be associated with the shift of R&D activities from the public to the corporate sector. The concentration of innovations by corporate capital limits the power of society to reduce inequality and to provide greater social stability through “the incredible productivity” of technological progress.     

The public sector and convergence with spatial interdependence: empirical evidence from Spain

We propose a framework to analyse convergence between regions, incorporating the public sector and technological knowledge spillovers in the context of a Neoclassical Growth Model. Second, we apply novel estimation methods pertaining to the spatial econometrics literature introducing a spatial Durbin panel data model based on instrumental variables and maximum-likelihood estimation. Our model makes it possible to analyse, in terms of convergence, the results obtained in Spanish regions with the policies implemented during the period 1980–2011. The results support the idea that education and fiscal policies have a positive effect on regional development and cohesion. Therefore, we can conclude that it is possible to obtain better results for regional convergence with higher rates of public investment in education and tax revenues. We also obtain interesting results that confirm the existence of spillover effects in economic growth and public policies, identifying their magnitude and significance.     

对技术创新推动彩电产业结构调整的思考

彩电市场竞争中洋彩电采用“技术领先”策略占据技术制高点,国产彩电采用“技术适宜”策略占领了市场主体。国产彩电在品牌市场份额竞争的“价格大上呀”中展开库存调整,价格调整,生产调整,技术调整,应深入进行技术战略调整,把“技术适宜”策略调整为“技术创新”战略。通过观念创新,技术创新,管理创新推动彩电产业结的调整,获得彩电市场技术优势,提升国际市场竞争力。     

Reprint of: Sewage Pollution and Institutional and Technological Change in the United States, 1830-1915

This article examines institutions for water pollution control and their interaction with water supply and sanitation technologies in the United States before the First World War. The article discusses how growth of settlements polluted waters and created pressure to adopt local institutional responses and networked water supply and sewerage technologies in the mid-19th century. However, the new urban technologies undermined local institutional responses and expanded the scale of water pollution problems they were expected to resolve. Water companies, households and local governments litigated their water pollution conflicts in the courts in the absence of other alternatives. In the end of the 19th century, many states adopted water pollution policies. At first, public health authorities enforced the new policies to protect public water supplies from sewage contamination. However, when the effectiveness of filtration and chlorination of drinking water was demonstrated in the early 20th century, public health authorities ceased to enforce discharge prohibitions and instead pressured water companies to adopt the new technological measures to protect public health.     

Strategic technology scanning

This article proposes a procedure for strategic technology scanning, an activity that has received insufficient attention in the literature to date. Strategic technology scanning is needed to strengthen the link between technology and corporate strategy. This link is ever present although not always explicitly managed. For instance, while it is commonly recognized that the corporate mission dictates the technological interests of the organization, it is not always sufficiently emphasized that it is the quality of technology foresight that shapes the corporate mission in the first place.Scanning enhances technology foresight by seeking major distinguishing features in the technological landscape. These features are termed landmark technologies and serve as indicators of evolving technological and economic potential. For the strategic manager landmark technologies can become focal points for understanding the external environment, very much as core competencies have become focal points for understanding the internal capabilities of the organization.The scanning procedure proposed here is tailored to fit conventional procedures for strategic planning. However, it employs new theoretical structures from the field of strategic technology analysis; and calls for involvement of all levels of the corporate hierarchy-from the corporate board to the technology analyst. It seeks to maximize corporate learning.     

Luddites, the industrial revolution, and the demographic transition

Technological change was unskilled-labor-biased during the early industrial revolution, but is skill-biased today. This implies a rich set of non-monotonic macroeconomic dynamics which are not embedded in extant unified growth models. We present historical evidence and develop a model which can endogenously account for these facts, where factor bias reflects profit-maximizing decisions by innovators. In a setup with directed technological change, and fixed as well as variable costs of education, initial endowments dictate that the early industrial revolution be unskilled-labor-biased. Increasing basic knowledge then causes a growth takeoff, an income-led demand for fewer but more educated children, and a transition to skill-biased technological change in the long run.